I’m very glad this version of this game is available on my Switch. Link’s Awakening is a completely wacky game, filled to the brim with incongruous pieces that constantly keep your brain off kilter. Despite that, the completed puzzle is satisfyingly cohesive and oozes with the charm, intent, and creativity to leave a lasting impression.
The “it’s all a dream” theme of Link’s Awakening is pretty boilerplate at first glance, but the execution is so superb that I ended up forgiving it. The game delivers the dream with a tasteful degree of self-awareness: it nearly breaks the fourth wall to announce some hints, yet lets other unnerving components hang without acknowledging their absurdity whatsoever. This balance is struck tactfully to show the player that something is off here, for the entire ride. As a given from the start, the impending doom of your quest to end the dream begs you to confront the consequences of your actions—it’s not a cop-out surprise to save the narrative. The dream is a vehicle for storytelling, not the story itself, and it left me with pangs of remorse as I approached the inevitable end.
Link’s Awakening pairs those painful undercurrents with the brilliance of its colorful world, which expresses whimsy and delight around every corner. Koholint Island is chalk-full of pure and endearing friends, baddies who don’t take themselves too seriously, and a diverse array of regions and dungeons efficiently compressed into a tiny area. The Switch remaster embraces the original’s tight design and carries the intentional movement and curated precision of the Island into the current generation. It’s a shame that frames chug in so many circumstances both docked and handheld (especially given Nintendo’s track record for silky-smooth first party games), because the children’s-toy-plastic sheen applied to the 3D graphics is an absolute triumph which could be improved only with consistently buttery performance.
I love the graphics vision in the remaster, but playing Links’s Awakening also made me realize I should be more open to forgoing modern graphics to spend more time on older games. The core of Link’s Awakening is a great experience regardless of how much I like how the trees look. The overkill foliage and modern conveniences like a contiguous overworld only help reinforce what a treat the Link’s Awakening remake is to play on Switch.
The “it’s all a dream” theme of Link’s Awakening is pretty boilerplate at first glance, but the execution is so superb that I ended up forgiving it. The game delivers the dream with a tasteful degree of self-awareness: it nearly breaks the fourth wall to announce some hints, yet lets other unnerving components hang without acknowledging their absurdity whatsoever. This balance is struck tactfully to show the player that something is off here, for the entire ride. As a given from the start, the impending doom of your quest to end the dream begs you to confront the consequences of your actions—it’s not a cop-out surprise to save the narrative. The dream is a vehicle for storytelling, not the story itself, and it left me with pangs of remorse as I approached the inevitable end.
Link’s Awakening pairs those painful undercurrents with the brilliance of its colorful world, which expresses whimsy and delight around every corner. Koholint Island is chalk-full of pure and endearing friends, baddies who don’t take themselves too seriously, and a diverse array of regions and dungeons efficiently compressed into a tiny area. The Switch remaster embraces the original’s tight design and carries the intentional movement and curated precision of the Island into the current generation. It’s a shame that frames chug in so many circumstances both docked and handheld (especially given Nintendo’s track record for silky-smooth first party games), because the children’s-toy-plastic sheen applied to the 3D graphics is an absolute triumph which could be improved only with consistently buttery performance.
I love the graphics vision in the remaster, but playing Links’s Awakening also made me realize I should be more open to forgoing modern graphics to spend more time on older games. The core of Link’s Awakening is a great experience regardless of how much I like how the trees look. The overkill foliage and modern conveniences like a contiguous overworld only help reinforce what a treat the Link’s Awakening remake is to play on Switch.